We catch up with brothers Scott and Ryan Wild (AKA Phibes) whose remix of Beat Assassins’ “Home Grown” on Jungle Cakes just hit Beatport’s overall top spot.
Congratulations on your first Beatport number 1! How did you celebrate the news?
Thank you! We had already celebrated the Drum & Bass Chart number 1 on Thursday, then when we got to second place in the overall chart we decided it was very unlikely we would knock John Summit off the top spot, so we actually went out and celebrated on Saturday night with family and friends truly believing we wouldn’t get the number 1. When we woke up on Sunday morning and found out we were number 1 we were overjoyed with the news but seriously partied out. If we’re honest we popped the champagne and had an early night!
The original of “Home Grown” is by Beat Assassins. What’s your relationship with them and who’s idea was it to do the remix?
Jimmy from the Beat Assassins first reached out and asked us to remix his tune “Heavyweight Sound” featuring Raf MC last year, after that we started swapping dubs and he sent us “Home Grown”, the moment we heard those vocals we asked if we could have a crack at the remix and it all went from there. He’s been a true gent since day one.
What’s the story of the remix? What inspired you?
We’re always constantly experimenting with sound design inside of (soft synth) Serum and after making the main bass sound the whole song came together really quickly. It’s often the same: your sitting and designing for a while and then “there it is.” We didn’t touch the sound after we got it right. The rest of the song fell into place after that. It was done and dusted in a few hours. It was one of those days when everything just flowed together and we sat at the end of the session thinking, this is pretty good, we need to show people this now and everyone we sent it to had the same reaction: “What kinda sound is that?” That’s when we knew there was something special about it.
Reaching the top of the Beatport top 100 is a feat that has only been achieved a couple of times for drum & bass tracks. Was there one moment when you felt that something special could happen with this track?
When we first started promoting it the tune had amazing feedback as a dub in the scene which is always going to be a big help on release day. We started getting messages on our Instagram every day from people asking to buy it, when’s it getting released, etc. There was a lot of buzz after such a short period of time. This then continued for months so we got together with Jungle Cakes during that time and they supported us all the way. There was a great sense of purpose in this release. The label believed in the song as much as we did, especially Ed Solo and Jessi G, they were with us every step. I think a big part of the release doing so well was that we were all working at the same tempo and on the same page. It was a real team effort.
Has the current crisis had an effect on your creativity or workflow? What have you lined up until the end of the year?
It hasn’t! Honestly, we toured so much in 2019 that taking time off to just sit and get all our ideas done every day back to back has been great. We haven’t been able to see each other much as we don`t live together and Ryan is diabetic type 1 so he was high risk. We wrote while video chatting and sending files back and forth and it’s safe to say that we have a lot of tunes stockpiled now that are ready to go. We also started a Patreon page and became teachers, which has been an amazing and rewarding experience helping and watching people grow as producers. We have released sample packs and built a community that partakes in remix competitions every month. It’s been a lot of fun and has brought us a lot closer to our fans. They have supported us throughout this time and without them, things would have been very different. Big up to our patrons. We love ya!
With Jungle Cakes we have had a huge remix opportunity lately with a legendary reggae artist but we can’t reveal that just yet. We have a 4-track-EP for label Born On Road in the final stages and we will be releasing a lot of singles on various labels as we like to release consistently. We have a lot of songs so we’re currently deciding if we want to release album number 3 this year or a bunch of Eps. Our new goal is a Beatport number 1 album release, so we’re gonna get cracking!
